A weekend break – part 1

And then life got a bit complicated, what with bumping the car, and a party I didn’t want to miss on Thursday night and my friend having to work this Saturday morning and so on. But I’d booked, so I went.

On Friday the flight from la Palma was delayed, so the connection in Tenerife was really, really tight. To my surprise, I managed to jog all the way from the plane to the new departure gate only to find that a) I’d hurt my hip by running and b) the flight to El Hierro was delayed too. In fact, when I limped painfully to the second plane I was greeted by the same air-hostess I’d ad on the first flight. Yup. Same plane. No wonder it was delayed! But ouch, getting up the stairs to the plane was unpleasant, and coming down again was worse.

Well, my friend collected me from El Hierro airport and took me to my hotel. They’d only reserved me a room on the third floor (and there’s no lift).

So I asked for, and got, transferred to the first floor.

The hip continued so painful that I had to go and see a doctor. She gave me one of those examinations where the main diagnostic is to see what makes you scream. Then I got two injections, some pills, and instructions to rest. It worked. Chilling out with my friend got progressively less painful. My friend had to prepare for tour guiding so I went back to the hotel fairly early on Friday evening. Thanks to the injections, walking was less grim, but those stairs back at the hotel still weren’t fun.

I was tired and crashed into bed at about 9 pm.

And I woke up at 11 pm. The bar just below was holding a party. No wonder they’d given me a room higher up! At that point I found that I’d left the power cable for the laptop at home. Now normally I do lots of creative writing when ever I’m on El Hierro – I think my muse loves getting away from the routine and chores – but that wasn’t going to happen this trip. So I read, since sleep was impossible until the music stopped at 5 am.

So I spent most of Saturday morning (while my friend was working) asleep. Around 8 I got up and went out for breakfast (with the leg much better), then went back to bed. I got woken by the chambermaid who hadn’t expected to find anyone still asleep at 12:30.

When my friend finished work, we went down to La Restinga for lunch.  I even managed a hobble around the harbour. Then we met friends and had a good chat until almost sunset, and went for a very good pizza in a local restaurant, followed by an early night.